Upper Arkansas Wilderness Volunteers

2018 News

Upper Arkansas Wilderness Volunteers have a lot planned for 2018. In March, three members attended the Wilderness workshop hosted by the U.S. Forest Service, Region 2, in Denver, where the group was presented with a Certificate of Appreciation.

With the absence of deep snow, clearing of the lower trails has already begun. As the snow melts, trail monitors will work their way higher. Since this area is home to the 14ers, these trails are the most popular and heavily used and getting them cleared of downed trees and debris is the priority. Following that, the most popular local trails will then be cleared. After that, clearing is as needed based on hiking reports.

The Colorado Trail and the Continental Divide Trail both pass through our Ranger Districts and while we do not maintain those trails, we do assist in clearing large trees when requested by the Colorado Trail Foundation.

Later in the season UAWV will assist the Forest Service with projects they need completed on the forests. One project that we have assisted with in the past is the location of illegal campsites, so we will likely be undertaking some restoration work as the season moves on.

If you encounter us while on the trail, please introduce yourself. We are always happy to chat with trail folk.

End of season update, October 2016

Upper Arkansas Wilderness Volunteers spent the last six weeks assisting the Leadville Ranger District complete their Campsite Monitoring Project. The project entailed finding and documenting campsite rings within the Collegiate Peaks Wilderness. The method used was to hike each trail in the Wilderness and to follow any side trails that might lead to hidden campsites as well as to check out any areas along the trail that looked like a potential site. UAWV volunteers completed 14 wilderness trails in Chaffee, Lake and Pitkin counties. The data collected included pictures and waypoints for each campsite as well as a description of the site with included usage intensity, presence of litter and tree damage. All data was entered into a national GIS database.

Along with this project, UAWV continued to remove trees, deal with water mitigation issues and generally improve the trail tread for trails in the Salida and Leadville Ranger Districts as well as lending assistance to the BV Trails group on the Whipple Trail.

UAWV assisted USFS Salida to create a protective area for Boreal toad tadpoles at Kroenke Lake.

Whipple Trail work summer 2016.

Wilderness monitoring

Overview

One of GARNA’s volunteer chapters is the Upper Arkansas Wilderness Volunteers (UAWV). It was formed in response to an initiative of the Leadville District of the San Isabel National Forest, the office which has lead responsibility for managing some 250,000 acres of designated wilderness within three districts of the San Isabel: Leadville, Salida and South Park. Faced with a mandate to increase its level of management with fewer resources, Leadville District officials recognized that involving volunteers was a good option since their own staff and budget for wilderness work are stretched very thin.

Mission Statement

The mission of the Upper Arkansas Wilderness Volunteers is to assist the Leadville and Salida Ranger Districts in managing and protecting wilderness and back country areas.

The Three Apostles from the Silver Basin Trail in the Collegiate Peaks Wilderness is typical of scenery a volunteer encounters while on patrol for the new GARNA chapter Upper Arkansas Wilderness Volunteers.

Volunteers, after proper training on standardized approaches and under the direction of Forest Service staff, will spend time hiking trails and reporting trail conditions, providing information to hikers, inventorying campsites and consolidating or eliminating certain sites, mapping the extent of invading plant species, installing or maintaining trailhead and directional signs, and performing minor trail maintenance. This is not a trail building or litter clean up or regulation enforcement group, nor is it a lobby group for expanded wilderness; it is simply a service group helping the Forest Service meet its challenges.

Past Years Updates

2014

Exciting news! As part of UAWV’s trail monitoring program, the group has decided to encourage members to adopt their favorite trail or trails to monitor and maintain. Adopting a trail will ensure that it will be monitored and that will free up members to check out other trails with less redundancy. Choosing a trail will be on a first come-first served basis. The adoption arrangement is just within UAWV and not officially with the Forest Service. A UAWV adopter chooses a trail or trails to monitor and monitoring would entail checking the entire trail as early as possible in the season to assess the trail condition and to determine if there were any maintenance issues. The adopter either performs maintenance or notifies someone who could and it is the adopter’s responsibility to follow through.

2013

One of GARNA’s 2013 Volunteers of the Year was UAWV member Bob Dorenfeld. Bob was recognized for his development of a trails database for use by UAWV volunteers in tracking their work on the trails. Bob also assisted the GARNA staff with implementation of a constituent management program. Congratulations Bob!

UAWV now has over 60 volunteers. In 2013, volunteers donated 1,000 hours of time and worked on over 750 miles of trail.

Chapter Organization

The US Forest Service representatives and GARNA worked together to form the Upper Arkansas Wilderness Volunteers – building on the foundation of the former Arkansas Headwaters Wilderness Partners organization. The group meets regularly, has a Board of Directors and originally received organizational advice and training from a long established wilderness service group – the Poudre Wilderness Volunteers.